NOVEL WEB Chapter 226: Rolling Escape?
Lillian looked towards the blonde-haired man, identifying him as Lincoln. Then, she watched as he opened his mouth and spoke.
"Well, if it isn't the ones that killed our dear buddy Cicillian. It was definitely you guys, right?"
Balancing himself, he stood on top of the hawk's head, which dipped a bit at his weight but nonetheless kept afloat in the air as it flapped its wings.
Lincoln then waved his hand, waving it side-to-side with a casual expression as he spoke about his team member. He was sure they were the ones who had killed his teammate.
"I can't say I'm surprised. He was impulsive beyond compare. I thought he'd fall off the mountain and split his skull. It would've been satisfying."
Holding his chin, he imagined the thought. Then, he sighed, shaking his head at the unattainable image.
Lillian continued to listen as the short man continued to rant insults behind Cicillian's back—specifically, ones that described him as obscenely irritating and annoying.
Eventually, his ranting slowed and finished as he thanked them.
"You have my gratitude of freeing me of such a person for the last... couple dozen minutes."
Lillian smiled at him, which turned wry as she said:
"Don't you fear what he would have to say if he ever heard about what you said?"
Lincoln raised an eyebrow, then snorted mockingly.
"Why should I? He's weak. Just a mere support character in the team. And was, unfortunately, our healer."
"That's a bit harsh..." Lillian chuckled, "But, I do agree with you though. He was a tad bit too arrogant for my liking."
Lincoln's face lit up, completely forgetting they were enemies and engaging in a conversation with her.
"Exactly! You get what I mean—!"
He was then interrupted with a pat on the shoulder from behind. Turning back and staring at the featureless white mask of what Lillian identified to be Paul, he was reminded of their task.
Nodding and shrugging off the hand, he raised his palm towards Lillian and the two behind her and muttered in an indifferent and cold voice—a stark difference from his tone just a few seconds ago:
"I'll be needing you to go away while we clear things up."
Inside of his palm, a slim wooden wand appeared. Wrapping his fingers around it, he focused his mana through it.
Lillian's eyes widened at the wand aiming at her, then watched as the tip pointed at her began to glow.
Her mind raced as she scanned through her memories, recalling all the information about the blonde-haired individual. And what she came up with was that...
She would be killed if he released his attack with the wand.
Right before Lincoln fired off whatever attack would come out of his wand, Lillian dashed to the side, pushing Charlotte back against Norman before lashing her hand out towards the hawk they were riding on.
From the hurried wave of her hand, a blade of water shot out, stretching in height as it cleaved through the hawk's right wing.
However, right before that could happen, right before the two men fell, a beam of condensed air shot out of Lincoln's wand, crashing into the wall and burrowing a hole into it that caused the side of the mountain to shudder.
Lillian could feel the mountain tremble slightly from the sudden impact on its side, causing rubble to fall from the cliffs above. She quickly urged Charlotte and Norman to go down the path.
The goal of going up the mountain was to "aggro" the enemy.
Now that the task had been achieved, there was no point in staying up there.
As they were quickly but carefully making their way down the mountain, she looked to the side, finding the disabled hawk falling from the sky, along with the two men.
In any normal scenario, this would be the end for them.
However, not even a brief panic crossed Lincoln's face, and neither did Paul's if his face were to be exposed. Instead, the blonde-haired man moved his hand towards the masked individual.
And before Lillian's very eyes, they began to fly...
But it was more accurate to say they were... floating.
Lincoln hovered in the air, holding onto Paul's hand, preventing him from falling and becoming a mushy blood splatter at the base of the mountain.
His calculating eyes watched as Lillian made her way down the mountain along the path. Then, he raised his wand and began charging his next attack.
This made Lillian grimace. Was this man truly about to bombard them from above like some kind of airborne artillery?
The answer was undoubtedly yes.
Falling from the sky, a bombardment of narrow pillars of condensed air fell, crashing into the mountain and causing it to shudder, shake, tremble, and all that could describe the cause of the vibrations that spread across its rocky body.
A quarter way down, it was beginning to become a lot more difficult to truly come down unscathed.
Not only were they on the run from a flying artillery unit, but they also had to traverse the slopes of the mountain without falling off the edge.
Her mind raced to come up with a solution to their precarious situation. That was when she had an idea spark inside her mind.
"N-Norman! Create a ball we can all get inside!"
Norman, who was leading them the way day, drew his attention back to Lillian. Without doing his signature gesture of pushing against his glasses, he did as he was told.
Lincoln, who was slowly drifting around the mountain, spotted the three of them again.
As he prepared to raise his destructive wand once more, he quickly turned his body to the side, narrowly dodging a blade of water from slicing him in half.
Glancing at the blade of water that had passed by him, he looked back towards Lillian's group, only to find that they had disappeared. Instead, what he saw was a huge steel ball rolling down the mountain at an absurd rate.